Blog

One year ago, on April 3, 2014, Monument Valley arrived on the App Store. Up until that point, we had little idea what the wider public would think of our game.

Thank you to everyone who's ever played Monument Valley; to those who have shared it either in person or online; to those who made our hearts grow three sizes with messages, fanart and cosplay. Because of you, Monument Valley has become something greater than us.

We thought we'd mark the occasion by sharing some of our memories from the development of Monument Valley, its expansion Forgotten Shores, and the crazy awards season that followed.

A shot from our little behind the scenes featurette shot by Ben Powell

Dolph is the team mascot

Highly productive teamwork

Pash disrupts production by breaking his arm on a taxi

Dan's producing intensifies

After printing out all the levels for the first time, David is just too excited.

The team!

Days before submitting to Apple, we quickly design and constructed an additional 'chunk' for Water Palace

Pash and Neil demoing MV at GDC 2014, a few weeks before release. Pash spent the previous day hacking the game to display sideways on a display set to landscape.

Iterating on the colour palette of 'the throne', using printouts to make sure it works with the rest of the game.

Finding out we got Editor's Choice on release

Our wall of hype / fanart / Adam Saltsman

Monument Valley prints on display at the Úll Conference

David paints the Totem, a friend

Manesh and Dan demonstrate the perks of AirBnB life. WWDC 2014.

Winning an Apple Design Award!

Ken prepares for his GDC Europe talk with a selfie

Neil figures out the optimum position to play Mario Kart 8

David in front of an early assembly of Forgotten Shores chunks

We get a lot of mileage out of Lynnmuffin's plush totem cubes

Forgotten Shores development

Doing an art pass on The Oubliette from a hotel room in Shanghai with a borrowed monitor

Forgotten Shores crunch time lead to 5am Stoolball sessions

To capture trailer footage at a high enough resolution, we need to set the monitor of our Windows machine to vertical alignment.

Nothing like seeing your game on display at an Apple Store in your home town

Ken and Dan just psyched to be nominated at the Game Developer's Choice awards!

Three GDC Awards. Unbelievable.

Meeting your hero Tim Schafer on Monday: utterly amazing. Being presented three awards by him on the Wednesday: priceless.

Three of the many Totems we've received from our amazing fans. Thank you Lynnmuffin, Andreas and Patrón!